As most bones grow, they get wider in all directions, expanding outward from the center, but usually bones grow rapidly only during certain parts of the year: the summer or the wet season, when food is plentiful. Growth slows down during the winter or dry season. If you cut open a bone, you can see a record of each time growth transitions from rapid to slow: a ring. That’s right—just like trees, bones have rings inside, and because that summer-to-winter switch happens once a year, that means one ring is laid down each year. By counting the rings you can tell how old a dinosaur was when it
...more